We’ll Never Be Perfect Wir werden nie perfekt sein Nunca seremos perfectos Nous ne serons jamais parfaits Non saremo mai perfetti 完璧にはなれない 완벽할 수는 없습니다 Nunca seremos perfeitos Мы никогда не будем идеальными Asla Mükemmel Olmayacağız 我们永远不会完美 我們永遠不會完美

One should be satisfied with the fact that we have achieved what we have achieved.

It's not nothing.

Hi There, Steve Kaufmann here.

Uh, today I want to talk about perfectionism in language learning.

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Now, what do I mean by perfectionism?

I think I, I could also turn perfectionism in language learning,

the sort of the desire to perform.

How did I do?

I've compared that urge to sort of be judged or the fear to be judged. Ik heb die drang om beoordeeld te worden vergeleken met de angst om beoordeeld te worden.

It's sort of like a, an Olympic diver and to me, language learning

is very different from Olympic diving or any kind of performance.

We learn languages in order to communicate. We leren talen om te communiceren.

So this might mean in order to understand the movie in order to watch a series on

Netflix and get a sense of some, maybe distorted sense of the culture, but Netflix en krijg een idee van een misschien vertekend gevoel van de cultuur, maar

nevertheless, to enjoy that experience, to understand, and also to communicate,

to speak, communicate ideas, communicate feelings, it's all about communication.

So now of course we would all like to speak, you know, as well as

we can, as correctly as we can.

And to that extent, it is useful to every now and again, study grammar.

Uh, because there are things when we just listen and read that we don't notice

in the language, I've said this before.

Some things have to be pointed out to us.

And even after they're pointed out to us, we still won't get them right.

I mean, again, we've had this experience of correcting a mistake and making the

same mistake again and again and again.

And the reason that happens is because in my mind, the process of learning

a language is a process of creating new neural connections in the brain.

Uh, the brain establishing some patterns, uh, us slowly getting used to this new Uh, de hersenen die enkele patronen vaststellen, uh, wij wennen langzaam aan dit nieuwe

language, but we get used to it, or we get accustomed to it in a very individual way.

It's very much influenced by our native language.

Uh, and so some people are going to, you know, acquire a, a series of habits

in the language that might be, uh, with better pronunciation or worst

pronunciation, or more grammatically correct or less grammatically correct.

While we want to get better, we shouldn't be so worried about how

we're doing, worried about how we're being judged that we miss the

main goal, which is communication.

Uh, and, and I, the reason I bring this up right now is becasue amongst the comments

here, someone said, oh, Steve, you know...

in fact I get those quite often...

you say you speak 20 languages.

In fact, you don't.

The other day you spoke Italian and you were very rusty and so forth and so on.

True.

And there are languages that I have spoken and I would have trouble

speaking right now, at least initially, but those are still languages that

I have invested a lot of time into.

Those are languages, like say Korean, where I'm not at all happy at my

ability to produce the language or even to understand the language.

I have, at least on our count at LingQ a large, uh, passive vocabulary.

I understand how the language works, the structures in the language, because I've

seen these patterns so many, many times, but I haven't been using it and therefore

I can't speak it very well if at all.

Uh, well I can speak it, but not very well.

And, uh, but if I were to go to Korea, it wouldn't take me a day or two before

I would be able to speak fairly well.

When I was in Greece or Prague or Romania, I was also communicating.

Communicating, not perfectly, but communicating.

So languages that we learn to a degree, which is less than perfect, those are

still languages that we have learned to some extent, we have enjoyed

learning, we have discovered bits of.

And if that is true for languages that I don't speak as well as I would like, say

Italian, which might be my 10th language.

It's also true for someone who is learning their first foreign language.

In other words, it's always not quite as good as we would like.

However, it's very much a personal thing.

It's your foreign language.

It's your English, it's your Italian, it's your Spanish.

And one should be satisfied with the fact that we have

achieved what we have achieved.

It's not nothing, even though we would all like to improve.

And that's another reason why we've had this debate before here

about pitch accent in Japanese.

I lived in Japan for nine years.

I've been speaking Japanese for 40, 50 years.

Never even knew until recently that there was such a thing as pitch accent. До недавнего времени даже не знал, что существует такая вещь, как тональный акцент.

It never prevented me from communicating.

I do not believe the Japanese people by and large are bothered Я не верю, что японцы в целом обеспокоены

by someone who has improper pitch accent, whatever that might mean.

Um, we don't need to seek perfection.

We don't need to.

There's nothing wrong with aspiring to achieve perfection.

There's nothing wrong with focusing on one language and trying to be as

accurate with the grammar as possible, trying to get pitch accent, write

in Japanese and all of these other things, but it's not necessary.

And if you don't do those things, you can still enjoy the language.

You can still say you speak the language, uh, because you know,

performing to a degree of perfection is a very limited aspect of what's

involved in learning a language.

And I think to the extent that people are concerned about nailing these things down,

it probably inhibits them and it reduces the enjoyment of language learning.

It makes us less likely to engage with the language, to speak the language.

And we all know that the more we engage with the language, the more we

listen, the more we read, the more we speak, the more we make mistakes, the

more we're going to improve in time.

So, uh, I just mention that because people often say, well, you say speak 20...

You say you speak 20 languages, but you're not very good at any of them.

And yeah, I'm not going to be as good in 20 languages as

someone who focuses on one.

And there's always people who are better than me, better than you.

It doesn't matter.

It doesn't take away from the enjoyment that we can all achieve in

learning one or more foreign language.

So that's what I had to say about the pursuit of perfectionism.

Thank you for listening.